Bringing Western Games to China: The Difficulties and Challenges
Gary Huang
International BD Director
NetEase
Content
• About Chinese Market
• The Difficulties and Challenges
• Successful Example
About Chinese Market
PART ONE
Why China ?!
Mobile Game Users
Smartphone Users
4% 29%
2010
About 35 Million
Mobile Game Users
2015
About 374 Million
Mobile Game Users
Fantasy Westward Journey (梦幻西游)
Mobile Version of NetEase’s Flagship PC Game
No.1 on Chinese iOS Top Grossing Charts
No.4 on App Annie ‘s Worldwide Top Apps by Revenue
PCU: 2 Million
PART TWOBringing Western Games to China:
The Difficulties and Challenges
Culture: Art & Story
Art: Cute (big head), Chinese Story: Westward Journey
(Classical Chinese literature)
Art: Cartoon, Exaggerating, Lively Story: no particular
storyline, virtual world
Art: Cute, leaning to realism Story: Western
magical world
Technology
Competition: The Best Only
With fierce competition, only the innovative and
well polished games can win over the most of games
The Difficulties and Challenges ?
User Experience
CommunityMonetization
Innovative gameplay
• Market is saturated with copies
• Market trends move too rapidly
• Famous IP + AAA quality no longer enough to stand out
Game should make financial sense
Opportunity for large
scale expansion Big
potential audience
Well-integrated
monetization
Not competing with
established market leaders
Monetization
Free to play Premium
-Few are applying this mode, no premium games on Android. -Since Apple adjusted the minimum paying unit to 1RMB, many games use the mode to get on chart.
-Highly matured, Best way to gross -Thousands of systems are developed to pay while play. -For china particularly, recharge via text message is the best practice to increase grossing on carrier’s app shop (Android)
-Half baked model, only a few genres (SLG, casual games, social games)are applying.
-Large amount of games are applying, especially hardcore/offline games.
China
West
Community
Growing System
• Grow rapidly in the early stage
• The need leads to interactive and pay
Social System
• Friends system
• Marriage system
• Chat/Message
• Mentor
PVP
• Competition will leads players to have more interaction and pay
Guild System
• Good way to arouse player’s emotion change, to get connections with other players
PART THREESuccessful Example
World Soccer Collection S
NetEase first mobile game licensed from a foreign developer (Konami)
• Top sports game since launch
• Top 11 on grossing chart
• Keep stable ranking position for the past two years
Localization
Social
User
Interface
Daily Task
Newbie guide
Leader-
board
Full optimization of Newbie guide
Full optimization of Newbie guide
Ver. 1.2.0
World Challenge Match
Players challenging the top global teams can become “+” players
New commentators
Added commentary by famous commentators: “funny style” and “passionate style”
Ver. 1.1.0
Leaderboard
(Match ranking)
Every month is one game season. Players can challenge opponents any time and find excitement from climbing up and down the match rankings!
New commentators
New commentary by famous commentators: “sweet style”, “Shanghai style” and “Cantonese style”
Ver. 3.1.0Add Galaxy match play
2 teams compete and according to both sides' victory or defeat, they get corresponding points reward.
Special AwardRandomly get some real teams' badges, uniform vouchers and boundary breaking bonds.